


Out, damn spot

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Demonic Possession, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Alec Lightwood, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Parabatai Feels, Protective Magnus Bane, Self-Hatred, Supportive Jace Wayland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 17:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17791397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Alec killed Joslyn Fairchild, no matter how much everyone tells him that it was the demon possessing him and not an act of his own, he still can't wash her blood off his hands no matter how desperately he tries. Alec scrubs his hands raw until the bristles dig into his skin and the hot water sears his flesh and yet he can still feel her warm blood coating his skin.





	Out, damn spot

**Author's Note:**

> I'd started writing this ages ago and finally managed to post it. This wasn't how I'd expected it to end but if I'm being honest I don't remember how it was supposed to end so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Everything ends with Magnus. Hope you enjoy even though it's mostly a jumbled pile of shit x

His hands were red and sticky and he shoved them again under the boiling water from the faucet,  slicking his hands up with a copious amount of poorly scented soap and scrubbing with a rough brush he had found in one of the shelves.

Red blinded his vision and Alec scrubbed his hands raw until the bristles dug into his skin and the hot water seared his flesh. He didn’t care- his hand was coated in the tacky blood of Joslyn Fairchild, his boot prints were outlined in her blood. Every time Alec closed his eyes, he saw his arm going through her chest, her wide and frightened eyes, the way her frantic breath felt against his face, the flow of her blood over his hand.

They kept telling him that it wasn’t his fault- that it was the demon who possessed him, the demon did it, not him. But how could he believe that when he let the demon inside him in the first place? Let it take over his soul and corrupt his mind, puppeteering his actions and killing someone near and dear to the hearts of his family?

There were tears in his eyes but Alec ignored them, instead keeping his eyes glued firmly to his vile hands, reddening from both the heat of the tap water and the rough treatment of the brush. He didn’t care- in Alec’s eyes, he deserved it, deserved the punishment he was giving himself only because he knew with absolute certainty that nobody else would do it for him.

He was dimly aware that his chest was tight- almost too tight to breathe and too tight to think straight. He leant heavily against the chipped white basin- probably the only thing in the entire Institute to be out of order. All the doors to his room were closed and locked with runes, the heaviest items of furniture he could move on shaking legs pushed in front of them. He’d come out when he was good and ready.

Clary had found him in the hallway, blood still on his hands, bloody footprints leading away from Joslyn’s dead body and straight to Alec’s shaking and horrified form. He didn’t even remember what had happened until they re-watched the footage together and Alec felt like his whole world was crashing down on him, burying him under the rubble that was his old life until he couldn’t breathe under the weight.

It was only a matter of time until someone found him, Isabelle or Magnus or Jace, pushed the furniture out of the way and barged into the bathroom. But until then, Alec focused solely on his task of scrubbing the brush back and forth and rubbing the soap between his hands.

There was a commotion outside his room but Alec honestly couldn’t find it anywhere within himself to care. Nobody was banging on his door so nobody wanted him and the footsteps of many people rushing past didn’t bother him at all.

Looking up, there was a large clean mirror that flashed Alec’s reflection back at him. His hair ran in thin, tangled strands down his sweat-slick face, there was a speckle of blood on his chin, stark against his too-pale skin, hands shaking from where they rested under the water, his eyes bloodshot and with purple half-dark moons under them- Alec longed to put his fist through the glass.

His hands were starting to hurt now, that was a fact that Alec was only vaguely aware of, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He deserved it, deserved the pain, deserved the punishment for what he had forced Clary and Jace and Luke to go through- losing a mother and a lover all in one fell swoop. How could he stop when he knew people he cared about were hurting because of something he did? Something he didn’t have enough strength to stop? Something he could have prevented if he had just been better, stronger, more like Jace and Izzy and their parents.

Jace, Alec realised with jarring velocity, no matter how much Alec loved and adored his _parabatai_ , its what it always boiled down to. Alec may have been the oldest but Jace was the favourite. Alec was always striving for his approval, to be like him, to meet his standards.

Blood began to sprout from cracks that formed in Alec’s hands and ran in rivulets down his skin until the harsh, unrelenting water washed it away down the drain. He couldn’t care less- maybe the pain he felt on the outside would stop the overwhelming pain he felt clutching at his heart, sinking its talons into the flesh of his organ and squeezing all the life out of him.

The repetitive motion brought him peace in a whirlwind of a world where everything was out of order and nothing was where it should. Alec hated change, he despised it with his very being, and the similarity of scrubbing his skin clean of blood was oh so alike to cleaning his arrows or sharpening the arrowheads. A moment of clarity, of calm in the destruction of his life.

Destruction is something he seemed to always bring. He destroyed his family by kissing Magnus and ending the wedding that never should have been. He destroyed his family’s faith in him by failing to transport Valentine to Idris. He destroyed his _parabatai_ bond with Jace over a petty spat about a girl. Every good thing Alec had in his life, grasped firmly between his desperate fingers, he destroyed and ruined beyond repair.

Even his relationship with Clary, while nowhere near perfect, was getting better by the day. And Alec, in only a few minutes, had ruined months’ worth of hard work and dedication of trying to befriend Clary and accept her into his family. He already looks after three younger siblings, what’s one more?

Alec ruined everything he touched. He shattered precious things beyond recognition and broke beautiful things without a second thought. Magnus called himself a monster for being a warlock, Simon called himself a monster for being a vampire, Jace called himself a monster for loving his sister, Clary called herself a monster for being Valentine's daughter. Alec was a monster purely for existing and for his continued crimes to go unpunished.

What made him better than everyone else? What gave him the right to think that just because he’s a Lightwood that that immediately makes him loyal and strong and cunning? What right does he have to evade punishment and neglect the damage he left behind unscathed when good people, honest people lay fragmented in the streets?

Someone was calling his name- a voice as familiar to him as his own name, but Alec didn’t pay it any mind, too focused to the task in front of him, scrubbing his hands clean of Shadowhunter blood, but then strong hands gripped his shoulders and whirled him around and Jace shouted, “Alec, stop!” loudly at his face, staring aghast at the sink. “God Alec, your hands.”

Behind him, Alec could see the heavy dresser Jace had jolted out of the way when he kicked the door off its hinges and the heavy wooden door now swung shut loosely, it's locks broken. “What do you want, Jace?” Alec’s voice was rough even to his own ears. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m kind of busy?”

“Doing what Alec? Hurting yourself?” Reaching down with one hand, Jace turned Alec’s palm back and forth so he could assess whatever damage Alec may have done. “What the hell are you even doing in here?”

“Cleaning the blood.”

Growling, Jace reached behind him and turned off the tap before reaching into the shelves and pulling out a disused med kit, setting it on the basin and rifling through it, pulling out some crisp white bandages and a small bottle of disinfectant. “Come on Alec, nobody blames you for what happened to Joslyn.”

“Well, I do!” Alec roared, ripping his arms from Jace’s grip and spinning on his heel to shove his fist through the large mirror, spider-web fractures spreading up the glass, his knuckles leaving a bloody indent. His reflection shattered into a million little pieces of nothingness, along with Jace’s shocked and fearful face, and Alec was thankful.

Hissing, Jace dragged Alec out of the bathroom and manhandled him roughly onto the edge of the bed- a bed Jace knew was much too small to be fit for anyone, much less the Head of the Institute, but Alec never complained- and forcibly ripped his shirt down the centre to expose Alec’s chest and Jace immediately began to draw an iratze on the skin before dropping his stele to the bedspread and meticulously began plucking glass shards out of Alec’s knuckles before the skin healed over. “You know, this isn’t a Shakespeare play,” Jace said eventually, trying to keep his voice even. “’Out damn spot’ doesn’t work in real life, only to crazed, bloodthirsty murderers.”

The blank, glassy-eyed look on Alec’s face did nothing to calm Jace’s nerves. Shame, hate and despair flushed faintly through their bond as Alec failed in holding his emotions back. “I am a crazed murderer now.” His voice dull and held no emotion except an expanse of emptiness. That worried Jace even more. “Just when I’m finally starting to work things out with Clary, and I go and do this to her?”

“Shut _up_ , Alec,” Jace pleaded painfully, worried eyes scanning Alec’s face for any sort of emotion, but Alec’s face was carefully blank and Jace knew what he was doing. “Nothing that happened was any fault of yours. Believe me, Alec, I know you better than anyone, and I know that it wasn’t your fault.”

“I was weak.” Alec ground out, teeth grit so tightly that Jace could hear the grinding from where he crouched on the ground. “I shouldn’t have let it happen. If I was better, I could have fought it off and kept it at bay long enough for someone to come and find me.”

“None of that matters,” Jace argued, frantically tying bandages around Alec’s bruised and bleeding fingers, tender skin rubbed red raw from the scrubbing of the brush. “You’ve always been stronger than us. You’re tough as nails, Alec. I know that you didn’t mean to kill her on purpose and you shouldn’t be beating yourself up for it. Besides, you didn’t even have any motive and we both know demons can’t act without it.”

“If I didn’t have a motive then why would the demon possess me and use me to kill Joslyn?” Alec’s voice shook but his eyes still stared blankly at the far wall when Jace snapped his head up to look at him so fast that his neck stung. “I must have had something, even subconsciously. She wanted to kill you. She wanted the Clave to order your execution because of the thing with Valentine. Maybe that was it.”

“And so you were willing to kill her for my mistake?” Jace asked, disbelief lacing his voice. He tried so hard to stop it from shaking. “You had a personal vendetta against her and you plotted her demise over a cup of coffee? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Alec shook his head but he wasn’t really there anymore. Some of him was listening to Jace and replying with lacklustre answers of his own, but the other half of him was back in the hallway, staring at the blood that slicked down to his elbow and wondering how the hell that just happened. “You know I would never do that.”

“I know that, but what I don’t understand is why you’re hurting yourself over it.” Jace kept his eyes fixed firmly on Alec’s face as he plucked the tiny fragments of the mirror out of his hands. To his credit, Alec didn’t flinch at the pain. “You were possessed by a demon. Sure, it was your body but you weren’t the one doing it.”

“You would never let a demon possess you,” Alec said suddenly and Jace looked at him strangely. There was an expression on Alec’s face that Jace couldn’t identify and it worried him to see such a horrible air of self-hatred and disappointment cross his _parabatai's_ face but Jace couldn’t pinpoint the problem. “Mum and dad would never let it happen either. I’m the oldest, the responsible one, the guy in charge, and I couldn’t even resist it. I might have well invited it in I put up that little of a fight.”

Jace bit his lip and resisted the urge to punch his brother in the face. “Alec, it was a strong demon. One of the strongest demons to ever enter the Institute. Not even I would have been able to fight it and that has nothing to do with skill or anything like that. It wasn’t your fault Alec,”

“It might as well been,” Alec’s voice lowered to something similar to a growl and he tried to pull his hands away but Jace grasped him tightly. “It’s all my fault. Her blood is on my hands, not yours and not anyone else’s.” Suddenly, his face fell and his eyes clouded over and Jace watched in horror as Alec tried to make his way towards the bathroom like a sleepwalker. “Oh god, the blood, I need to wash the blood…”

“Alec, stop this,” Jace stood up and moved Alec’s hands so they were in front of his eyes and Alec could see how clean they were. “There’s no blood. You washed it all away, your hands are clean.”

“But… its sticky…” Alec sounded like a petulant child and if it had been under any other circumstances, Jace would have laughed but at this point, he was just concerned. “I need to get it off.”

Jace pushed Alec back down to the bed and climbed on it with him, holding his hands firmly between his own. As Jace rubbed his thumb over the sink on Alec’s hands, the clouds slowly parted from his eyes and he looked at Jace with despair. “I killed Joslyn Fairchild because I wasn’t good enough,” his words were barely whispers and Jace felt something clutch at his heart. “I’m not fit to run the Institute if I can’t even hold off a demon attack.”

In all honesty, Jace didn’t really want to argue with him because he knew how stubborn his brother was but there was a pain so palpable in Alec’s eyes that Jace refused to just sit back and let it fester. “Alec, listen to me. Joslyn’s death was not your fault. I know you’re convinced that it was but I can assure you that it was nothing more than an accident. Your hands are clean, there is no blood. Nobody blames you for any of this- not Clary, not Luke, not me. I don’t care if there was any sort of incentive behind it at all but I know that if there was you would never act on it. You’re too good a man for that.”

Alec’s breathing was coming in shallow fits and burst and when he did nothing but shake his head in disagreement, Jace sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He diligently sent the message and after a moment a shimmering blue portal opened up at the foot of Alec’s bed and Jace pulled him through where they were met with the concerned form of Magnus standing in his living room. He took one look at Alec, gasped, and waved a hand over his head. Blue sparks erupted from his fingers and Alec fell back into Jace’s arms, unconscious. “You said it was bad but I wasn’t sure how bad,” Magnus mummed, running his fingers down Alec’s cheek. “Come, bring him to the bedroom.”

Jace lifted Alec easily into his arms and carried him into the room he shared with Magnus and tucked him into the blue silken sheets. “I know you enjoy your make-up and your glitter but you could really do with taking it off before you get into bed,” Jace said as he left the room wiping stray flakes of coloured glitter off of his arm in an attempt to break the tension.

“I could, but where’s the fun in that? It’s the only way I can get Alexander to wear any at all,” Magnus joked lightly as he steered Jace to the couch. “Here, sit. Tell me what’s happened.”

Magnus clicked his fingers and a glass of whisky appeared on the table before Jace and, not wanting to be rude, he picked it up and downed it all in one shot which Magnus immediately replaced. “It’s probably better if you heard it from Alec first but what the hell. A demon possessed him tonight and he killed Joslyn.” Magnus choked on his sherry wine. “Nobody blames him but he’s been beating himself up about it ever since. I came into his room and he was washing the blood off his hands. The kicker? There wasn’t any blood and he refused to believe me.”

As Jace spoke, Magnus had dropped his head into his hand and closed his eyes tightly. “Oh that selfless man,” He muttered. “Of course he blames himself- he takes the blame for everything, even that which he wasn’t involved in. I thought it was just a Shadowhunter thing but now I know it’s just an Alexander thing.”

“For the most part it’s a Shadowhunter thing but Alec just takes it to an extreme.” Jace sipped at his whisky. “Everything with him is extreme. It’s all black and white- feel too much or don’t feel at all. There is no grey area with him.

“That’s very true but it’s also one of the reasons I fell in love with him.” Magnus stared worriedly at the closed bedroom door where Jace knew Alec was snoring away, hopefully enjoying a comfortable, dreamless sleep. “His heart holds such love and care for everyone he meets. I have not met a Shadowhunter that feels like Alec does in centuries.” He glanced over at Jace. “Thank you for bringing him to me.”

“I felt he would be better off with you,” Jace said and he was almost surprised to realize that he meant it. “Maybe you can get through to him better than Izzy or I could.”

Magnus hummed. “Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully. “It would be best for him to be away from the scene of the crime, as it were. And Jace, don’t forget that you're just as important to Alec as I am. Don’t think that this changed his connection to you- I just feel as though he would respond better if he were not reminded of her death over and over again.”

“Don’t worry, Magnus,” Jace reassured, finishing his drink and standing up. “I’m not looking to compete with you for Alec’s affections. He shouldn’t be forced to choose between his boyfriend and his _parabatai_. Besides, I don’t really think I have enough competition to get territorial” He winked and was pleased with Magnus’s grin. “Think you could give me a lift back to the Institute?”

With a wave of his hand, Magnus opened another portal and Jace stepped through it back to Alec’s room at the Institute, casting one final glance at the closed bedroom door back at Magnus’s apartment before the portal closed behind him.

That night, Alec dreamed of blood, slick against his skin, Joslyn’s screams and pleading in his ear and the way it felt to have his fingers wrapped tightly around her heart.


End file.
